Colonels take down Longwood

With 3:15 left in the game, Eastern's Jeff Johnson gave his team the biggest lift of the night.

Leading a surging Longwood University team 67-63, Johnson laid out in full dive after a rebound at the top of the key. His outstretched fingers were able to tip the ball to his teammate.

His hustle was rewarded when Joshua Jones found him for the layup, extending Eastern's lead 69-63.

"Coach always tells us whenever there is a loose ball it has EKU written on it," Johnson said. "So we just try to get every loose ball and every rebound and try to scrap it out…we came out a little sluggish in the first half. We did a good job as a team fighting it out in the second half."

Scrapping it out could be an understatement, as Eastern finally outlasted Longwood 78-71 Sunday in McBrayer arena, moving the Colonels to 8-0 at home.

In the first half, Longwood was hot, shooting over 55 percent from the field and hitting four 3-pointers. The Lancers took a 40-35 halftime lead and threatened to put the game away with back-to-back threes from Tristan Carey in the first minute of the second half to extend the lead to 11.

But Eastern clamped down on the defensive end, holding Longwood to just 25 percent (eight-of-32) from the rest of the way.

"We fully understood coming into this game how offensively talented Longwood is," Head Coach Jeff Neubauer said.  "They put on a show in the first half scoring 40 points against our defense. We did a much better job defending them in the second half."   

The Colonels' offense wasn't too shabby either, hitting 17-of-27 shots to close out the game.

"I'm really pleased with the way our guys responded," Neubauer said. "We were down five at halftime then all the sudden we were down 11. It actually helped our guys get a great focus about us and we attacked from that point."  

Senior Jaron Jones paced Eastern (12-9) with 23 points in the non-conference victory, 17 of which came in the final half.  This was Jones' seventh game this season scoring at least 20 points.

Junior Mike DiNunno added 14 points, and the sophomore Johnson tallied a career-high nine rebounds to go along with 11 points off the bench.

"We knew coming in they gave up a lot of points," DiNunno said. "As a team, coach told us to attack the rim and that was basically our mentality."  

Eastern returns to conference action Thursday, Jan. 26, at 7 p.m. when the Colonels conclude their three-game home swing against Tennessee Tech.